


Cooperative Game Theory

by KogoDogo, marzanna



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Half-Life
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, HL2VRAI, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:47:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29258415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KogoDogo/pseuds/KogoDogo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/marzanna/pseuds/marzanna
Summary: Cooperative games are often analyzed through the framework of cooperative game theory, which focuses on predicting which coalitions will form, the joint actions that groups take, and the resulting collective payoffs.Gordon Freeman's got a sequel to get to, whether he likes it or not.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 31
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the HL2VRAI fic i've been running my mouth about for months. gordon freeman's about to have a very bad day.
> 
> this is a fanfic about a video game that is rated M for Mature. it is going to contain mature themes and sex and violence and other unpleasant things, but i am going to do my best to deliver it in a way that stays true to these dudes and the world around them. (mostly i'm hoping it's gonna be funny.)
> 
> i've been co-writing this with my partner, kogodogo, whose expertise and support have been invaluable. it's been a long while in the making. thanks 4 reading and enjoy your stay

_I have to… thank you for your… ah, service, Mis-ter Freeman. You’ve made some… compelling points, about the… metaphysical nature… of certain rat-themed com-mercial ventures. As well as, ahem, saving the world. Con… gratulations._

_All… good turns deserve a reward. It’s my son’s birthday today. You should… join us. There will be… pizza, and a birth-day cake._

_Enjoy the party._

Gordon Freeman opens his eyes.

There’s… a dirty floor. Under his feet. Rumbling. The thinking comes slowly. There’s people, too - when Gordon lifts his head, afterimages blur past his vision, and God, that throbbing in his temple is killing him, but yeah. People. One of them looks at him with something like concern.

“Was he on this carriage?”

Carriage? It doesn’t look like a “carriage.” It looks familiar, sort of, in a way only public transit can look. Dirty seats, dirty floors. Smells the part. Like a subway train or the Black Mesa tram, all gross and sticky and full of people who don’t look happy to be there. He gets the feeling that none of them are going to be happy when they hit their destination, either.

Something about their faces. Their strange, greasy faces. These are definitely not people who work with him, or people he recognizes at all, for that matter.

“This isn’t the birthday party,” Gordon says, hoarse. He doesn’t have to look at the strangers around him to feel the glances they’re throwing his way. They practically burn on contact.

“You should sit down,” somebody says to him directly. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

“’m good,” Gordon mumbles. “Great. Just gonna… keep standing here. And not do that. Throw up.” He clutches onto a nearby pole tightly enough that his fingers ache. Moving seems like a not-great idea right now.

The carriage shudders to a stop an indiscernible amount of time later, and the jolt of it almost knocks him over. He waits for the others to pass by him before he makes the effort to hop off himself. Gordon hasn’t felt this shitty since that mixer back in grad school. He still doesn’t know just what was in that punch.

"Ooh, Mr. Coolatta doesn't want to be wrong about a fucking _entertainment center_ so he's just going to dump me on a train to fuck knows where! Real cute, man!" He hopes G-Man can hear him, wherever he is. This is— this is _cheating_. Deny him the rat’s pizza? He thinks the fuck not.

That righteous anger keeps Gordon going until he steps onto the platform, at which point he sways and grabs hold of a railing for dear life.

Vaulted ceilings rise high above him, where the sun filters through dingy skylights. The platform itself is bracketed by tall, tall trains, packed together like matchsticks and stretching as far behind him as Gordon can see. It’s giving him vertigo something fierce. And they really need to get a janitor in here, like, jeez. Gordon scuffs the floor and leaves a visible streak in the dirt.

At the far end of the building, a man’s face looms in high definition, but looking at that massive, flickering screen for too long just makes Gordon’s headache worse. And so does that voice. It’s not even that it’s loud so much as it is irritating. Like a manager that’s sipped a little too much of the company Kool-Aid. He walks in a daze, streaks of color sliding past his vision, and tries his hardest to wrestle his brain back down to earth. No more, Gordon thinks. He’s not stepping into any more goddamn portals or teleporters or, or, whatever, if he can help it. He’s sick of this teleporting G-force hangover shit. This can’t be healthy.

Something heavy clatters to the ground in front of him. Gordon drags his eyes up and spots a pile of scattered luggage. And more importantly, the person that’s been shoved into it, struggling to right themselves.

Behind them, a man in a mask. It’s a bleak white color, eyeholes tinted black and impossible to see through from Gordon’s end, with a respirator at the front. Post-apocalyptic raider gear, but sleek and rounded and unblemished. Mass-produced. Like all the other guys nearby him in the same mask and the same leather armor.

“Whoa, what’s your problem, buddy?” he blurts out on instinct.

The masked man turns to look at him. “Keep moving,” he orders, deep and garbled, and a cold sweat breaks out on the back of Gordon’s neck.

What kind of filter are these dudes using? He can barely make out what they’re saying. Gordon’s mouth opens, but then he sees a gloved hand drift toward an unfamiliar weapon on the guy’s belt, and he thinks better of it.

“Okay, okay, moving along! Moving along.”

He does as he’s told and pushes his way through a turnstile, although he can’t say he’s too fucking thrilled about it. You bust your ass and risk your life to save the world, or _whatever_ it was he was doing back in Black Mesa, and what do you get? No birthday party. No warm soda. Just dropped unceremoniously into a shithole like this. It’s not like he was looking for a medal, here, but like, a nap would’ve been nice.

Actually, scratch that. He wants the medal. He deserves the medal for all the shit he put up with. Employee of the Year. Not whatever this is.

At least the next hall he passes through has somewhere to sit among all the, uh, garbage. Just for a moment. Gordon takes a seat at one of the dingy plastic tables scattered around the room and buries his head in his arms, shielding his eyes from the light. Deep breaths, buddy. He’s gonna be fine. Just a little further, and he’ll be back in his apartment in no time, all the bullshit of the week prior just a thing of the past. Maybe he’ll watch one of those DVDs he checked out from the library. It’s a documentary about sea lions. They’re cute little guys.

“Drank the water, huh?”

Gordon blearily peers above his arms. Oh. He hadn’t even noticed there was somebody else sitting at the table. A squat man in a blue jumpsuit looks at him over the sandwich in his hands. His nails are dirty, Gordon notices. They stand out against the white sandwich paper.

“What?” Gordon asks.

“They put something in it, you know.” The man taps his head with a knuckle, then continues, “Messes with your head. Nobody told you?”

“I didn’t— I haven’t drank anything, man. Just having a rough fucking day. I don’t even know where I _am,_ ” he groans, tucking his head back down.

There’s a dry, ugly laugh, and he hears, “They must have got you in the head but good. You’re in City 17, the crown jewel of humanity. Enjoy your stay.”

“For some reason, I don’t think you mean that.”

Something crinkles, and the man’s voice comes out muffled. “Hey, a smart guy. Better keep that to yourself - it won’t get you very far.”

He frowns, but it’s not like anybody can see it.

When that vein in his temple stops pulsing so badly, he lifts his head again, and he’s alone. And he realizes, suddenly, that he’s in a jumpsuit, too. Orange instead of blue. (It’s taking awhile for things to filter through, okay?) It’s stiff and scratchy, and the color isn’t doing wonders to complement his skin tone. It’s not what he would’ve picked, but Gordon feels a strange relief now that he knows he’s out of the HEV suit for good. He was starting to get worried that he really _would_ be stuck in that thing.

Up he goes again. This time, it comes a little easier.

His mouth’s so dry, and if he’s being honest, he doesn’t trust that guy back there farther than he can throw him. But when Gordon pats his pockets down, hovering in front of a vending machine, he turns up a fat fucking nothing. 

“Whatever. I wasn’t thirsty anyway,” he mutters to nobody.

Gordon resigns himself to following the thin string of people at the far end of the hall, feeding into a chainlink maze one-by-one. What is this place, even? He can’t shake the feeling that he’s being sorted into a prison camp or something. Maybe the “city” thing’s more of a euphemism. Seems kind of bleak, compared to the last place he got patted down by security. But none of these other doors lead anywhere, and he’s starting to get some weird looks from all the handle-jiggling he’s doing, so what choice does he have?

At the heart of all that fencing lies a congregation of four - no, five - hold on, he’s losing count. A number of masked guards. All of them staring directly at him as he steps into the center of them. Not nice odds. Gordon swallows audibly. Being sized up by a bunch of blank-eyed wannabe cops isn’t doing wonders for his heart rate.

“Move along,” one says.

Gordon blinks. The guard shifts on his feet. And the others with him.

“I said move along.” He follows the guard’s hand to his belt, where it wraps around the handle of a baton.

“Wait, but where? I don’t—”

And then the baton extends. It flickers to life, buzzing and crackling with blue light at the end. Just like a bugzapper.

“I don’t know this place, man, can I at least get some directions, or— Ow! Hey! What the—” Gordon flinches backwards, reeling from a sudden, unexpected, and _painful_ impact against his shoulder. “Not necessary!”

“I’ll tell you what’s necessary. Move.”

The others’ hands also drift toward their weapons. Gordon can take a hint. 

“Okay, I’m moving,” he says loudly, just to make sure they can all hear him. “Jesus Christ. You know you catch more flies with honey, right?”

He catches another blow, this time to the jaw. Gordon crumbles like a graham cracker.

“Motherfucker!” he hisses, rubbing his cheek. Is that— are they _laughing_ at him? What is their problem? One of them mimes something that he doesn’t want to repeat, and sourness suffuses him from the chest outward.

Couldn’t G-Man have dropped him off in, like, Albuquerque or something? Somewhere nice? He gets it, okay, he didn’t need to be fucking thoughtcrimed over the Chuck-E-Cheese thing. It would almost be funny if Gordon wasn’t convinced that he got a concussion on the way over. Humans weren’t made for all this alien technology horse shit! It’s putting holes in his brain, and he’s got enough of those already.

And… God, is he bleeding, too? He pulls back his fingers from his face. The tips are tacky and stained an orange-red. High-definition. Cool, but also, like, _not fucking cool_.

“Hopped-up, fucking, power-tripping bootboys, like I don’t have enough shit to worry about!” It comes out through his teeth, venomous but quiet. A guard still turns to look at him, though, as he stumbles to his feet. “Yeah, you heard me. What are you gonna do, hit me again? C’mon, man! Hit me!”

The gate ahead of him slams shut before he can walk through it, as if punishment for running his stupid mouth.

“Oh my God, what now,” Gordon groans. His eyes raise toward the ceiling. And then toward a camera on the wall, its light cold and red and directed right at him. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

A door to his right creaks open, the “Security” label on its front chipped and worn. And behind it, another goddamn bootboy telling him to come here, move along, down the hall, let’s go, like he’s not so much a person as some kind of livestock. Gordon can’t say he’s too jazzed about it. He’s not too jazzed about the glimpses he’s getting from behind the doors in this hallway, either: mysterious fluids and massive, futuristic computer terminals and men strapped to chairs and officers slamming the peephole shut in his face. And when he follows the guard into a room with a blood-spattered chair in the center, the comparison becomes a little too real.

“Hey, okay, that’s a— that’s blood. That’s a lot of blood. I don’t know about you, but I really wanna keep all my blood right in here, okay?” Gordon thumps his chest with a closed fist.

Another guard that’s already in the room, blood smeared on their helmet and visibly responsible for the mess, makes quick conversation and leaves. The sound of the door shutting behind them makes Gordon flinch. And now he’s alone. With this guy. Who’s currently talking about how he’s gonna need some “privacy”. Which, considering the state his predecessor left this room in, didn’t spark positive feelings.

In fact, he’s got to say there’s not much positivity left to wring out of him. All that’s left is a surge of panic - and a festering anger at Mr. Coolatta, perhaps the sorest loser he has ever had the misfortune of knowing.

“C’mon, can’t we work something out?” Gordon pleads beneath a nervous laugh, turning to his dangerous-looking escort. “You like company secrets? I got all kinds of company secrets, and trust me, I’m not at the point in my life where I give a shit about NDAs. I mean, not that I even know if Black Mesa’s still around to give a shit about _me,_ but you get my drift, right? Whoa, whoa, okay, stop walking so close to me, let’s not do anything drastic—”

“Whoa, now. About that beer I owed ya,” interrupts the guard as he pulls off that slick white helmet, revealing… Oh. A guy. Just some ordinary guy, with short dark hair and a soft chin and a wry smile. And eyes that glitter with something curious. Gordon’s head spins. “It’s me, Gordon! Barney, from Black Mesa?”

Gordon’s eyebrows knit together. From Black Mesa? He racks his brain and comes up short. Not that he knew many people on a first name basis in the first place. “Beer? That’s, uh, that’s nice of you, but can we rewind like, two minutes—”

“Sorry for the scare - I had to put on a show for the cameras. I’ve been workin’ undercover with Civil Protection.” It’s like Gordon’s not even talking to him.

Barney’s grin falters as an awkward pause draws out between them, one in which Gordon hopes he’ll explain who “Civil Protection” is, but doesn’t. So Gordon blazes forward and asks anyway. “Civil protection,” he starts, drawing it out. “Uh, cool. Is that what you call all those guys in the whole,” he gestures to the guy’s uniform, “because I don’t know if I’m feeling very protected!”

“Yeah. Long story. I’ll fill you in later, Gordon.” Barney chuckles and turns back to the wall. Which is enveloped from floor to ceiling by the same kind of computer terminal he saw glimpses of earlier, its architecture organic and undeniably hostile. Watching him fiddle with its controls is so distracting that Gordon’s brain almost doesn’t catch that last thing.

“Gordon? How do you know Gordon?” Gordon finally asks.

He doesn’t get an answer to that, though. Just some muttering under the guy’s breath, stuff about having to hurry and why do they make the darn things so hard to get into, shouldn’t have to be a theoretical physicist to log into Windows 95. Gordon snorts. But this Barney dude just keeps talking, and talking, and the gears in Gordon’s head struggle to turn fast enough to keep up. All he can do is nod and fail to get a word in edgewise.

Then he hears, “Great Scott! Gordon Freeman!”, and gets a square kick in the ass back to the present.

“Huh? Me?” Gordon follows Barney’s gaze. The monitor now hosts the enormous (and strangely familiar) visage of an older scientist, who also seems to know who he is. He's left with the unsettling feeling of taking an extra step at the top of the stairs. Being kept in the dark.

“He was about to board the express to Nova Prospekt,” Barney says.

Gordon’s frown deepens. He’d really like to know what the hell a “Nova Prospekt” is, thanks, or why he’d want to go there in the first place, but the conversation barrels past him without any clarification.

“Well, Barney, what do you intend?”

“I’m thinkin’, I’m thinkin’!”

“Hello?” Gordon waves a hand to get their attention. “Guys, I’m right here. And I’m gonna be real with you, I don’t have any fucking idea what’s going on, so if somebody could fill me in, that would be great!”

Barney raises his eyebrows. “Whoa, language, Doc.”

There’s something about Barney’s tone that rubs Gordon the wrong way, something almost scolding. Maybe even shocked. As if this guy has any right to judge. Gordon didn’t ask to be dropped off in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a bunch of bootleg Storm Troopers. All things considered, he’s being downright polite.

He opens his mouth to say as much, but he doesn’t get far before he’s cut off again.

“There’s no time,” the man on the screen insists, “but we’ll do our best to explain everything when you get here. Speaking of which… Alyx is around here somewhere. She would have a better idea of how to get him here.”

“Alyx? Who’s Alyx? And, while I'm at it, who are _you?"_ asks Gordon, a hand on his hip.

That earns him a sidelong glance from both of them, and Barney says, “Don’t mind him. He took a couple clubs to the head—”

“One! It was one club!”

“—and I think he’s feelin’ a little woozy. That’s Dr. Kleiner, buddy. Remember? From Black Mesa? You spent a hell of a lot more time around him than you did me, so I figured…” Barney pauses, as if stricken with a realization. “Aw, hell, we gotta get a move on. We’re takin’ enough chances as it is.”

Gordon pinches his eyebrows and takes a deep breath through his nose. “Okay! Why not. This might as well happen. Can you at least tell me where I’m supposed to be going?”

The video feed disconnects as silently as it started, leaving him alone with Barney again. “You’re gonna have to make your own way to Dr. Kleiner’s lab. Wish I could go with ya, but—” He’s interrupted by an insistent knock on the door, and he grimaces. “Aw, man, that’s what I was afraid of. Get in here, Gordon, before you blow my cover!”

With that, Barney yanks open the back door and shoves Gordon through it unceremoniously.

“Hey hey hey, c’mon, you could have just asked!” he squawks.

“No time for niceties, Gordon.” Barney’s voice is sharp and, in Gordon’s opinion, a little too mean. “Pile up some stuff to get through that window and keep goin’ ‘til you’re in the Plaza! I’ll meet up with you later.” That’s all he gets by way of explanation before Barney closes the door in his face.

“Fine! Fine. I’ll just _do that,_ since this is apparently something people do here!” Gordon gripes at the door, which remains firmly closed. Then he turns to examine his surroundings.

Okay. Those are boxes. Piled up high in the middle of a dark and forgotten room, with motes of dust freshly kicked up into what little sunlight got through. When was the last time anyone cleaned up around here? Or touched whatever was in these crates, for that matter? Gordon stifles a cough. Near the crates is a ladder leading to a loft, where a window lies conveniently open. The rest of the room is as barren as they come.

“You’ll never guess where you’re supposed to go, Gordon,” he says as he resigns himself to climbing it.

When he gets to the top, he finds that the window's not just open, but missing from the frame. He can’t stop himself from grumbling as he hefts boxes around to form a makeshift staircase. Good thing he’s been keeping up with his workouts lately, he thinks. Black Mesa didn’t exactly demand a lot of upper arm strength. That said, some of those sons of bitches are _heavy_. Gordon grunts, wrestling the last of them into position with his entire upper body. If anybody saw his feet slip on the worn wooden slats, well, no they didn’t.

Then there comes the matter of climbing up the fucking things.

“Come on, Gordon, let’s get this bread,” he tells himself, bouncing a little in place. “Gordon… jump!” The wood creaks ominously under his weight, but holds. Just barely. Long enough, at least, for him to make it to the window.

Gordon peers outside. Tall brick walls rise around a narrow spit of dead grass. It’s his first real look into enemy territory, if he wants to be dramatic about it, and he can’t say he’s impressed. Though, wow, that is a _lot_ higher up than it felt from the inside. He’s pretty sure he never used to be scared of heights like this, at least, not before he had to scale the canyons surrounding Black Mesa (to say nothing of the dizzying heights of Xen), but what else is he gonna do?

“It’s just a couple feet, man, no big deal,” Gordon says, clapping his thighs to get his head in the game. It’s not so bad. There’s another crate just underneath the windowsill. He’s just gotta… swallow past that lump in his throat and jump.

Unfortunately, his ass smashes clean through the box, and he hits the ground, hard. “Fuck!”

After dusting himself off and briefly tending to his bruised knees (and ego), Gordon searches the enclosure for a way out. They’re really gonna leave him to fend for himself like this, huh. (Not that he even really knows who “they” are, anyway.) Just stumble through this City 17 place like he has any fucking idea where he’s going, and pray that he makes it wherever he’s supposed to be without getting his head caved in. No problem. He’s already off to a good start, he thinks, walking through an open door into the rear of another building.

On the inside, it looks to be a wing of some public building where entropy has long since taken over. High ceilings and muted light make the space look emptier than it is. Dirt and crumpled papers gather at the corners of the walls, recessed and inlaid with wood and clearly impressive once. The only evidence that people still come through here is a vending machine at the end of the hall, its front panel glowing.

“Lookin’ like I might be home free,” Gordon says, smug.

He rounds a corner only to be met by another guard blocking his path, leaning against a garbage can and examining their fingernails. _Shit_. They’re dressed in the same creepy, skull-like mask as the others, and he’s gotta say, running into one of these dudes unawares does bad things to the heart. The guard glances up. Then fixes Gordon with a long look before kicking an empty soda can at him.

“Pick up that can.”

Gordon stops short. “What?”

“I said pick up that can.” The guard gestures to it, like Gordon doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“I’m not picking up your trash, man,” he says, irritable, as he attempts to step around. He’s headed off by a broad arm, and more importantly, the baton it holds at the end.

A moment passes. Gordon’s eyes narrow. The guard doesn’t move.

Frankly, he's had it up to here with security guards and their power-tripping bullshit, but at least these ones seem human. Unlike some others he could name. He can deal with ‘human’. Gordon steps back and picks up the can, hefting it in his hand thoughtfully. Huh. So he can even pick up things like this here, too. Nice improvement over the last game.

Then he chucks it at the guy’s head. It bounces off the helmet with a hollow clink. That baton extends fully, crackling with electricity, and Gordon cackles, giddy and nervous, as the guard starts to chase him.

“Oh, you gonna catch me? Gonna catch me, bro? Better hurry up! Better do it in one shot!” He swerves around and bolts ahead, but the guard’s hot on his heels, muttering something about “failure to comply with loyalty check” that makes him snort. “More like loyalty _check this out,_ ” Gordon calls out, before trying - and failing - to vault over a bench.

He stumbles and hits the ground, arms and legs akimbo.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hisses as he scrambles back to his feet.

Something whooshes uncomfortably close to his ear, and Gordon yelps, ducking on instinct. But he keeps going, darting around hapless citizens in jumpsuits just like his, until the tile under his feet switches to pale brick and he’s struck by the sudden blinding light of the sun once more. Outside. For real this time. In the middle of an open plaza, surrounded on all sides by looming, weathered buildings and mysterious spires. Gordon presses his hand against his eyes to shield them. It’s of little help when something flashes near him, like a camera - and, whoa, that _is_ a camera, in the form of a bumbling little soccer-ball-sized robot that hovers above his head.

“Buzz off.” He waves it off.

It continues to flutter and snap Gordon’s picture, the four flat panels on its front constantly realigning themselves to focus the light. And that’s all it does. Even as Gordon shoves it out of his face. When that fails to convince it to move along, he just picks a direction and walks away. Briskly.

The robot drifts in his general direction, but Gordon’s faster, and it loses him in a snarl of tenements. Whichever way Gordon ends up, batting his eyes in an effort to clear them, it leads him down a narrow squeeze of rain-stained complexes, bordered on the interior by patches of grass. It’s quieter here, hushed except for a voice that blares from a distant speaker. The words themselves are indistinct. But Gordon recognizes that even-mannered tone, and it makes him roll his eyes. Blah, blah, fascist dictatorship, he gets it. He’s played games like this before.

When the stars clear, he notices that there aren’t very many people around, considering just how big this city seems to be. Big enough that he already feels lost. And… there’s more officers than people, actually. Several stand guard at the far end of the block and another hovers near an open door, glancing down Gordon’s way. Behind that open door, somebody yells.

Oh, Christ. Gordon’s heard of shit like this. Street smarts would dictate that he just keep walking and mind his own goddamn business. But he can’t stop his gaze from shifting to the source, and his heart pounds in his chest as the officer steps in front of the door to occlude his vision. They mutter something like, “Keep walking,” but the distortion from the helmet makes it hard to tell.

Well, it’s not his fucking turn to play hero. Gordon Freeman doesn’t even have his crowbar. So he does just that and keeps walking.

There’s not far for him to go, though. At the end of the street, a parked tank blocks his access, surrounded by guards and - Jesus Christ, what is _that?_ A gigantic, spider-like thing strides across the street, its joints creaking and hissing as it does. Gordon stops and stares. But it doesn’t look back at him. It goes on its way, followed by more uniformed soldiers. He takes a moment to shake himself before he turns around.

More guards close in on the opposite side of the street, muttering into the radios at their breast. Gordon can’t make out what they’re saying, but he knows it can’t be good.

His eyes dart from left to right, scanning his surroundings. They’ve got him pinned. And, judging by the way they keep pointing and staring, they’re interested in him. Unluckily for Gordon, the only way for him to go is to his right, squeezed into an alley lined with garbage and empty boxes and used pallets. And it’s cordoned off from the other side of the block by a chain link fence. Calculations whir through his head. He’s not climbing that thing, that much is certain. But maybe he could… shove that empty box into the corner. Jump on top. Or wrangle that pallet into a makeshift ramp.

Or, Gordon realizes shortly after breaking a sweat trying to do just that, he could just take the bright-fucking-yellow ladder right next to him. He scales the fire escape like he meant to do that all along.

When he drops down on the other side of the fence - carefully this time, he reminds himself, _carefully_ \- it seems like more of a lateral move than anything. At the end of the street, another tank, more officers, more bobbing cameras, more jumpsuited citizens facing the wall with a wide-legged stance that suggests a cavity search. Gordon hurriedly looks away. And at the other end, he rounds the corner into a cul-de-sac, another dead end ringed by residential buildings and fenced-in squares of grass. Something tells him it shouldn’t be so quiet here. Like he’s walked into a goddamn graveyard.

A pair of men glance his way, but not for long. They just shift closer to one another, away from him. And they keep their voices low enough to avoid being overheard by the handful of masked officers that dot this otherwise-empty space. The dead end he’s walked himself into should be more concerning, probably. But there’s a… spinny thing just ahead that catches his eye, nine plastic panels with crosses and circles, and what else is he gonna do but spin ‘em?

He chuckles to himself. First he sets up a winning game of tic-tac-toe, then spins the last panel as fast as he can. Just for the hell of it. It comes up crosses, right in the middle.

“Whoa, nice. I win!”

Only when he looks up does it occur to him that he’s in a playground, nestled in a small spot of green. Gordon passes by a rusting swing set that he doesn’t trust to hold him - he’s a big guy, okay - and another spinny thing, but of a different kind. The kind that lies flat on the ground, that he can spin and spin and then try to jump on once it’s spinning at full tilt and grab hold of one of the bars and get dizzy and lose his grip and tumble off of, swearing the whole time. And then he can do it again.

“Gordon Freeman’s having a blast,” Gordon says to himself. He leans against the bars of the carousel, forgetting that this is the kind of thing that makes it start moving again, and nearly falls over. “They really wanted to show off the physics here, huh? Cool. I’m never doing that again.”

Gordon straightens the front of his jumpsuit and walks past a handful of staring soldiers like he has any business being here. He clears his throat, too. For good measure.

His “just act natural” autopilot system directs him to keep walking. The problem with this is that there isn’t much for him to walk _toward_. Turning around and going back the way he came would look stupid, for one thing, and suspicious for another. And he doesn’t like the way that one guard’s fingering his stun stick.

Gordon’s eyes alight on the only nearby exit: a door to an apartment complex, conveniently open. And he takes it before it even consciously registers, heart thudding faster in his chest. Nerves have a habit of creeping up on him when he’s lost. To say nothing of being lost _and_ surrounded by hostile men in armored uniforms. It’s not like he was allowed to bring his cellphone into the Black Mesa complex, you know, he can’t just GPS his way out of here. No minimaps. But if he keeps moving forward, he’s sure he’ll figure out where the hell Kleiner’s lab is eventually… or, maybe, he’ll run into a soldier kicking in somebody’s door, instead.

Great! Gordon makes a swift turn into a complete stranger’s apartment.

“Whoa, uh, hey! Don’t mind me, I’m supposed to be here,” Gordon says, loudly and unsuspiciously.

The people inside don’t really seem to mind him, though. Two of them huddle on a couch and mutter amongst themselves without looking at him. And another nods and passes him through, like they know each other. Gordon frowns.

“Man, it must be really dire here if this is the shit you’re cool with,” he tells them, picking up a fruit from their table and biting into it. It’s brown-skinned and mealy, with a stringent aftertaste.

And upon closer inspection, yeah, it is dire. Paint and plaster flake off of the walls in broad patches, leaving the bleached wooden slats visible underneath like ribs. They flex, even, breathing in and out in time with the muted sounds of violence from the hallway. There’s a single mattress lying flat on the ground, no bedframe or anything. Complete with yellowed stains. And an empty bookshelf that hasn’t seen the touch of a book in ages, if the dust is any indication. But they have a TV, too, somehow. A goddamn television. Even if it’s small and squat and seems to be tuned in to the same jackass that’s been plastered all over the city.

“You better get going.” A ruddy man with close-cropped hair looks up from the TV. “They’re shaking down the whole complex.”

There’s a thud from the other side of the wall, and then another, followed by muffled, mechanical speech. Gordon raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, no kidding,” he says.

He threads around the officers in the hall by taking the back door out of the apartment, breathing a sigh of relief as they fail to notice him. Something’s strange about the way these people are just… letting him file through their homes, as if he’s supposed to be there. As if they knew about him. That strange feeling only intensifies as Gordon takes the stairs up at the end of the hall. A man pokes his head out of his door to wave Gordon inside the moment he leaves the stairwell, and it’s not like Gordon’s gonna look that gift horse in the mouth, but still. The point is that there's clearly something he's fucking missing.

This apartment’s just as fucked as the last, honestly. There’s barely any indication that _humans_ live here, what with all the dirt and the broken furniture and the exposed brick walls. A woman lying on a couch doesn’t even move her head as he passes her. He knows it’s supposed to be some kind of fascist dystopian hellscape, but sheesh, you’d think they could lighten up a little.

Gordon’s hastily shepherded out, though, and quickly forgets about it. Nowhere to go but up - he was heading toward the stairs anyway, but the sudden emergence of a cell of officers clambering up the stairs behind him makes the decision much more permanent. Gordon yelps and scrambles to the roof on hands and knees. They’re hot on his heels, the characteristic buzz of their batons never too far behind.

Another man slams a door shut behind him and holds it there, yelling at him to get moving, and Gordon’s eyes dart between him and the open air of the roof. It’s not a door ahead of him so much as a giant, busted-out section of wall. And beyond that, slippery terra-cotta tiles and a several-story drop. Gordon’s stomach sinks.

“Oh no,” he mumbles, walking forward despite himself. “No, no, no. No more heights, man, I can’t deal with heights!”

But the universe doesn’t much care for what Gordon Freeman wants to deal with, and he finds himself stumbling out into the light. And then sprinting, when fucking _gunfire_ whizzes past him.

“What the fuck, what the fuck—”

He darts behind a dome-shaped structure, but not before it clips him. Across the bicep. An ugly sound rips out of him.

“Oh, fucking, God, _ow,_ nobody told me they were gonna be _shooting_ at me!” Gordon pulls his hand back from his shoulder and sees blood. Things start spinning a little. But the buzz of heavy artillery shakes him back to his senses.

It shreds the tiles next to him, but Gordon runs past the moment it stops. The space under his feet grows narrower and narrower, a flat plane to an edge, the shear resistance of a handful of tiles the only thing between him and busting his head open like an egg on the sidewalk. And, yeah, maybe he’s not about to die in real life, but it makes his heart thunder all the same. Epithets tumble out of his mouth as he bolts to the end of the next building, circling into the first open window he finds. 

Okay. Solid ground. He can work with this. This thought comforts him for roughly ten seconds before he descends down a flight of stairs and into a pair of heavily-armored soldiers.

Gordon turns on his heel, but there’s another pair rounding on him from the other end of the hall, and they’ve got him kettled before he knows it. All he can do is raise his arms in a pathetic show of self-defense. God, what they don’t tell you is that those stun sticks _hurt!_ The blows rain down hard and fast, vindictiveness laced into every strike.

He yells and kicks. He sees stars. And then they blossom into white across his vision.

And then…

It stops.


	2. Chapter 2

Gordon blinks. Colors bleed back into his sight from the edges. He’s on the ground, there’s something slick under his head, and there’s a woman hovering over him, smiling like he should be in on a joke. Gordon cannot emphasize enough how little he is in on any of this.

“Dr. Freeman, I presume.”

He presses his hand to his forehead and groans. “God, I sure hope so.”

She’s nice enough to offer him a hand up, and also nice enough not to mention that she just watched him get his ass kicked. Once his head stops spinning, it’s easier to take in specifics. Like her height. Sure, he’s been taller than most of the guys he’s run across - all of them, actually, Barney included. Pretty short dude. But he’s still not expecting the way she has to crane her neck just to look at him. Her hair’s short-ish and pulled back by a headband, and her clothes look a decade out of date, what with those low-rise jeans and everything. They’re tacky enough that Gordon’s eye keeps being drawn to them.

“Better hurry. The Combine can be slow to wake, but once they’re up, you don’t want to get in their way,” she tells him.

As she speaks, she hits a button on the wall. He listens as machinery whirs and churns somewhere just out of sight, but his mind is somewhere else entirely. The word “Combine” sticks out like a sore thumb, spoken in such a tone that he can tell that she believes he should already know what she means. Problem is that he doesn’t. He knows what a combine is - there’s only two possible definitions he can come up with - but she says it with an ominous emphasis. A capital “C.” _The_ Combine. He makes an educated guess that perhaps that word and the soldiers shooting at him had something in common.

Lost as he is in his thoughts, Gordon belatedly realizes that the button she pressed has summoned an elevator. The door unfurls in front of her.

“Uh. Noted.”

He’s not sure exactly where he ended up, or why there’s an elevator here in the first place. Or why _she’s_ here. Last he checked, he was… running. Blind. He could be fucking anywhere, for all he knows. Although, upon closer inspection, Gordon can kind of narrow it down. Massive windows with small, dirty panes suggest something industrial, maybe, and the crates stacked near the service elevator lend themselves to the impression. The bodies of half a dozen soldiers near the elevator lend themselves to a different impression, he thinks. A more relevant one. He nudges one of them with his foot, and feels a bizarre relief when they groan and stir. So she didn’t kill them. That’s probably good.

“Dr. Kleiner said you’d be coming this way.” She laughs under her breath and steps into the elevator. Gordon figures he might as well follow. Between them, at least one of them seems to know what they’re doing. He watches her lean back against the wall, then press the button down almost as an afterthought. “I don’t think it occurred to him that you might not have a map.”

Something shudders in the gears and pulleys around them. Gordon can’t suppress a shudder, either. “Yeah, I guess they figured I’d just figure it out. Like I’m some kind of… I don’t know. A baby bird. Go ahead, jump out, since you feel so fuckin’ smart,” he says, hands gesturing wildly as he talks.

The woman raises her eyebrows, and a smile line creases the corner of her mouth. 

“…I’m Alyx Vance,” she starts. “My father worked with you back in Black Mesa? I’m sure you don’t remember me, though.” Alyx rubs the back of her neck.

“I’ll be real with you, Alyx, there’s a lot of shit I’m not remembering right now.”

There’s a pause, then her shoulders shake with a laugh. 

“You’re not what I expected, I’ll say that much,” Alyx says. Under normal circumstances, Gordon would have taken offense, but there’s something about the way she carries herself that seems earnest. Sincere. It’s like they’re old friends, or at least like she _believes_ they are. She has a natural charisma that all his coworkers at Black Mesa lacked.

No amount of charisma changes the fact he’s sore and confused, though. 

“Wait, were you… _expecting_ me?” He frowns.

“Let’s just say I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She leads him out when the elevator creaks to a stop, and pauses in front of a floor-length yellow poster of the man from those broadcasts. Gordon’s getting kind of tired of seeing his face, old and snowy-haired and dour in spite of his smile. He looks vaguely familiar, though, and it takes Gordon a moment to realize he’s the spitting image of the Gorton’s fisherman. What the fuck did he miss?

Alyx gestures to it and asks, “Remember him from Black Mesa?”

Gordon shrugs. “I don’t think you understand, man— uh— Alyx,” he insists, stammering awkwardly. “Like, I’d just started working there a little while ago. I know, like, three guys, and I don’t know any of _these_ guys. Except, like, one of the guys? The old guy, he looked like one of my guys, and let me tell you, I was _not_ expecting that—”

“Whoa, let’s bring it down to an 8,” she snorts. “This is your old administrator. Don’t get my dad started on Dr. Breen, or you’ll know more than you ever wanted to know.”

Alyx messes with some kind of electrical panel next to the poster, and the wall opens inward to reveal a short, dark tunnel, ending in an ordinary door. Gordon whistles in surprise.

She walks backward through it, watching him. “Through here,” she instructs with a nod. Then she tilts her head. “You know, it’s funny, you showing up on this day in particular.”

And he watches her open the door before he can respond, and she vaults over a railing to the lower level of the next room like she’s done it a dozen times before. He is… not doing that. 

“Is it? It hasn’t seemed very funny so far, personally,” he says as he takes the stairs instead.

She glances back at him. “We’ve been helping people escape the city on foot. It’s a dangerous route to my father’s lab, through the old canals. Today, we’re finally on the verge of having a better way.” 

Excitement lines her voice, but she remains silent for the rest of their short trek, almost like she’s waiting for Gordon’s curiosity to get the best of him. A long, awkward invitation to ask questions about whatever revolutionary whatever-the-fuck she has going on. Unfortunately, he’s got more important things on his mind; for all he cared, she could have been talking about buying a panel van. That’s not nearly as vital as figuring out why he was currently bleeding and lost in a bad YA novel instead of enjoying greasy, reheated pizza. 

Eventually, she stops at a vending machine. It’s got the same misspelling as the cans he’s been kicking around all day. Weird.

“Here. Let me buy you a drink,” Alyx grins.

“Huh? Oh, thanks, but I heard something weird about the water here, I dunno if—”

She doesn’t listen to him, instead popping a coin into the slot before hitting a complicated series of buttons and, uh, the side of the machine. There’s clearly some method to her madness - another hidden panel swings open before him, revealing complex laboratory equipment on the other side. It’s honestly pretty sick. 

Alyx turns back to him and leans on her hip, arms crossed, smugness evident in her posture. _Yeah. It is pretty sick, huh._

Finally, she speaks up. “Oh… and by the way? Nice to finally meet you.”

“Uh, thanks,” Gordon says, mystified.

He slips in ahead of her once it becomes obvious that she has no intention of leading, and he feels her step in line with him once his foot is in the door. She’s watching him, curious. Scanning his face for any sign of approval before breaking away to tend to… well, whatever it is she does. Gordon’s not sure. She never clarified exactly who she was or what she did. Actually, nobody has. He’s just having to take their word for it that they’re not as bloodthirsty as the assholes with the cattle prods. (Saving his skin is worth a couple points, though.)

The lab itself is more spacious than Gordon thought it would be. It’s almost barren, with an empty, freshly-swept concrete floor and high ceilings leading to boarded-up windows. Some barebones, half-cobbled venture that still manages to impress him with just how advanced and _scientific_ some of this gear looks. There’s tubes! Fluids! Industrial-sized oscilloscopes! He’s gotta admit, he loves that kind of thing. And, unlike most of the other places Gordon’s been in the past few hours, it’s fairly clean. There’s even an embroidered rug in the center, which is a remarkably vivid shade of red, all things considered.

Alyx heads over to a hunched figure in a white lab coat, which Gordon quickly realizes is that Dr. Kleiner guy. In the flesh. Crouched low next to a stack of crates and animal carriers and scratching his head.

“Blast that little… where did she get to? Lamarr! Come out of there!” He slaps the lid of a crate and peers inside. It’s large enough that, even from a distance, Gordon can tell that it’s empty, but there’s an air of desperation to the guy that he can almost sympathize with. Judging from the sheer size of the carrier, it’s hard to believe he lost a dog that big, though.

“Everything alright, Dr. Kleiner?” Alyx asks him.

Kleiner jumps, startled, and rubs the back of his head. It takes him a moment to collect his thoughts, as if he has to reboot his brain like an old computer. The silence is brief, and with surprising fluidity, he continues as if he’d never been spooked at all. “Oh, hello, Alyx,” he says, straightening. He props a hand against his hip, then sighs. “Well, almost alright. Lamarr has gotten out of her crate again. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect Barney of trapping and…”

Kleiner trails off as his eyes finally drift over to Gordon. Then, after a moment, they widen in recognition. Whatever clicks into place behind his eyes utterly fails to do so behind Gordon’s.

“My goodness… Gordon Freeman. It really is you, isn’t it?”

“That’s me. One honest-to-God Gordon Freeman.” He tries to laugh, but it comes out strained. Up close, the sense of familiarity is even more pronounced. It’s something about that receding hairline and upturned nose and those beady little eyes. But Kleiner looks at Gordon with far more reverence than he’s ever gotten from anybody he knows back home, and it’s unsettling, is what it is. He’s just some fucking guy.

“I found him wandering around outside. Bit of a troublemaker, isn’t he?” Alyx elbows him in the arm, knocking him out of it.

To his credit, the sound he makes isn’t as whiny as it could be. “Hey, I’m not a troublemaker! I’m just a trouble… finder. It finds _me_.”

Kleiner fixes him with an unreadable look moments after he finishes speaking. Somehow, it’s both relieved and troubled. And there's something he can’t place underneath. He’s definitely happy to see Gordon, Gordon's confident of that, but doesn’t seem to know what to make of what he’s saying. The tense stare they exchange is mercifully short, however, as Kleiner breathes deep and continues on as if nothing happened.

Maybe he was glitched, like Coomer had been. Maybe everyone was. Their AI packets seemed too fucked up to be of any help.

“We owe a great deal to Dr. Freeman, even if trouble does seem to follow in his wake,” Kleiner reminds her. And him. He’s finding at least half of this sentence to be news to him. Dr. Kleiner directs them to a computer monitor without actually directing them, assuming they’ll follow behind. And Gordon does, because it’s nice to just follow people around sometimes. “I must say, Gordon, you’ve come at a very opportune time.”

Gordon doesn’t find out what that opportune time actually is, because he’s too busy trying to scan Kleiner’s face. Looking so hard makes his ears turn off. The problem is that Gordon must’ve seen a dozen guys like this at Black Mesa, balding and bespectacled, and his name’s not ringing any bells, and—

Wait.

“I can’t take any credit for the breakthrough, Doctor—”

Gordon interrupts her, hands gesticulating, “Hang on. You look like… okay, I know this is a long shot, but have you ever heard of a ‘Dr. Bubby’? About yea high, same, uhh, glasses and… hair… deal.”

The two of them share a look. Then Kleiner responds, slow and curious, “I, uh, I’m afraid I’m not familiar. As much as I wish I had an encyclopedic knowledge of scientists with my… disposition.” 

He chuckles and gestures to his head, but there’s something probing in the way he keeps his eyebrows raised. A distant feeling that Gordon only barely registers as _disappointment_ starts to unfurl in his chest. He wasn’t expecting to be so let down to hear that, even if a part of him had begun to expect the worst. He can’t help it. Gordon likes to consider himself a realist. The two looked so alike that he was convinced there _had_ to have been some connection, but he figures he should have known better than to get his hopes up.

Bubby probably actually made it to the party, he supposes. With Coomer and Tommy and even the dog. He lets out a rattling sigh as he tries to convince himself of this. It makes sense. G-Man’s beef was with him, and not the rest of the science crew. All the mental reassurance in the world can’t shake him of that pesky little worry, though.

An awkward pause makes itself at home. Which Alyx breaks shortly thereafter. “Let’s just see if this thing works, okay?”

This thing.

It hits Gordon that he’s missed the entire conversation, that he doesn’t know what “this thing” is, and now both Alyx and Kleiner are looking at him expectantly. Almost unblinking. They want to hear his thoughts, they seem to be waiting for his go-ahead. He doesn’t know why, seeing as he’s just some guy, but the uncomfortable feeling their stares elicit makes his mouth start running before his brain has a chance to catch up. 

“Okay, cool, yeah. The thing. We should definitely—”

Now Gordon’s the one interrupted by somebody calling out, “Well, is he here?” 

And he turns around to see… Right. Barney. Walking in like he owns the place, right at home, obviously not having gotten the everloving hell knocked out of him between Point A and Point B. Lucky bastard. And now the gang’s all here, he thinks, but that has yet to be comforting. Barney grins and slaps him on the shoulder. His good one, mind you, but it still stings. 

“There you are! Man, Gordon, you stirred up the hive!”

“Yeah, uh, so I’ve noticed! Is anybody gonna fill me in on why these guys keep trying to beat the shit out of me? Or is that just what they do to everybody in the fucking gulag?” Gordon asks. His voice cracks a little from the performative stress.

Barney whistles, low and amused. “What, is the stress getting to you? I can’t blame you,” he snorts.

Okay, that’s getting a little old. Fucking, yes, he’s stressed. What part of his whole general demeanor suggests that he’s not stressed out right now? He’s 27 years old, for God’s sake, it’s not like he oughta have his mouth washed out with soap! Gordon opens his mouth to say something caustic, but loses track of it as he watches Barney fiddle with a bank of monitors. From here, it looks like they’re overseeing everything from the plaza to the interrogation rooms Gordon passed not long ago. As if they’re tapped in to the same cameras that were trailing him earlier.

A line of goose-stepping Combine soldiers marches forward on the screen, and a frown creases Barney’s face. He turns back to look at the rest of them, disquieted. “We can’t keep him here long, Doc. It’ll jeopardize everything we’ve worked for.”

Gordon blinks but says nothing. His brows furrow. He can feel his lips twitch in preparation to ask for clarification, but the little hamster running the wheel in his head is busy taking a lunch break. The conversation moves on around him.

Alyx leans back on a lab bench, crossing her arms, and says, “Don’t worry, he’s coming with me.”

Gordon’s eyes shift in her direction. “I am?”

There’s a lot more he wishes he could have said instead, but most of the words in his head trip over each other before they can get out. They’re hampered by an intense burst of anxiety, courtesy of the idea that he’s about to be ushered off yet again. Outside, probably. Into unfamiliar territory, none the wiser about all these “Combine” guys. He shrugs his injured shoulder and lets out a dissatisfied huff through his nose.

“That's right, Barney. This is a red letter day. We’ll inaugurate the new teleport with a double transmission!” Kleiner beams at them, his excitement palpable. He even holds a finger proudly in the air.

And now the hamster is back in his wheel, running so fast that it trips and is thrown against the side. Gordon’s mouth hangs slack at the sound of “teleport.” Thoughts are moving so quickly that he still can’t manage to speak English, but he does manage a noise that’s almost human and a weak shake of his head.

Now, he supposes he knows what “this thing” is that he missed the memo about. His brain spirals down and backwards, to only hours before. Nursing a hangover on a train that hadn't seen a janitor's touch in years. Courtesy of a teleporter. Portal. Whatever. It’s all the same shit, you know, it’s even in the name. It’d taken him all of three steps onto the train platform to swear off this bullshit, and now he's sitting there listening to perfect strangers gleefully celebrate the idea of catapulting him through another.

His mouth opens. He attempts to choke out a refusal. A louder, more boisterous voice cuts him off.

“You mean it's working? For real this time? Because I still have nightmares about that cat,” says Barney.

Gordon and Alyx share a look. The fact that even _she_ looks so unsettled just drives the point home. His mind fills to the brim with horrifying mental images of mangled cats and equally mangled Gordons, lying on experimental platforms with their insides on their outsides. Nausea sweeps through his stomach like a flush of cold water, and his voice pitches up in an involuntary whine that never figures out how to transition into actual words. 

“Now, now, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” Kleiner starts, opening up his persuasive argument with the least reassuring statement possible. He faces away from them and busies himself with a long stack of printer paper. 

“What cat?” Gordon and Alyx ask at the same time, in the same slow, worried cadence.

“We have made major strides since then. Major strides.”

 _”What cat?”_ insists Alyx.

Kleiner resolutely ignores her. The fact he’s being so flippant about the very real possibility of committing manslaughter makes a switch in Gordon’s head flip from “anxious” to “angry.”

And so he chimes in, “Yeah, can we talk about that? Please?” He steps around Kleiner’s desk to face the three of them head-on. “I’m not crazy about, like, anything I’ve heard in the past few hours, and you all just keep talking over me and telling me what to do and now I’m freaking out about a fucking cat!” The longer he talks, the more his hands move and the more his voice rises in volume.

Another pause draws out between the four of them, more unpleasant than the last. They’re all staring at him like he’s grown a third head, and Gordon feels a prickling heat crawl up the back of his neck. He felt pretty sure of himself just a moment ago. Why does he feel like he’s been caught doing something stupid?

“Alright, Gordon,” Kleiner says slowly, “let’s slow down. It’s been a long time since you were in the land of the living, and I can imagine you’re awfully disoriented.”

“A long time? What are you talking about?”

“Gordon, we haven’t seen you in twenty years,” Barney tells him. He gestures to his hair, where it’s graying at the temples. “Can’tcha tell?”

That headache flares to life again, mild but insistent. Gordon’s gaze flickers between the three of them like they’re all in on some joke, and he’s waiting for them to get to the punchline. But the punchline doesn’t seem to be coming.

“No. No, I was on my way to…” Gordon stops himself from finishing that statement. He’s starting to feel awfully silly. He should have known better than to think that after all this - after twenty-seven years of pushing his way through bullshit at every turn, from the big to the small to the cataclysmic - he would just stop Benrey from destroying the world and get his just desserts. His eyebrows furrow, and he pinches them at the nose, hoping it’ll make the tension around his skull ease up. It doesn’t.

Twenty years. G-Man flung him twenty years into the future. What the hell happened between then and now? 

…Teleporters. They’ve got teleporters now, apparently. He knows that much.

Barney clears his throat and steps forward. “Hey, Doc. Since he’s not taking the streets, you might as well get him out of his civvies,” he says to Kleiner, bypassing Gordon entirely.

“What?” Kleiner blinks. “Oh dear, you’re right. I almost forgot. Barney, I’ll give _you_ the honor.”

“Uh, pardon me? My what now?” Gordon drops his hand from his face to look between the two of them, nose wrinkled in confusion.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to care. Barney just chuckles and says something about having to get back on his shift and walks right past Gordon, like he’s not even there. Heads to some kind of control panel instead, next to a corrugated steel door in the corner of the lab. It’s reminiscent of a garage. Gordon can’t help the prickle of curiosity as Barney pecks at a keypad. The door churns and rattles, some unseen motor slowly hauling it upward to reveal a small, brick-lined room. And in the center—

“Oh no,” Gordon moans, quiet and nasal.

In the center, a glossy, orange-and-black HEV suit, enshrined in a narrow case with a glass cover. Gordon can just make out his reflection in it. Blurred at the edges, yes, and distorted a little by the curvature, but that’s him, alright. Gray hairs and all. (It’s the stress, okay, you have no idea what kind of stress MIT puts on a guy.) And that’s… that’s not _his_ HEV suit, exactly. It’s slimmer, sleeker, the bulky armor of the torso and waist replaced with a woven black fabric of some kind. At some point in the last twenty years, somebody must have decided that the bright fucking orange diaper wasn’t doing the wearer any favors.

“Here we go,” Barney says, pride obvious in his voice and the forward thrust of his chest.

He steps inside and flicks a switch, turning on an overhead light. And revealing a small, squat, uncomfortably fleshy creature on top of the glass case. Barney lets out a noise of surprise, then shouts as it _leaps_ at him, right in his face. Gordon freezes.

“Damn it! Get it off me!” He wrestles the thing off his face, hands tight around two narrow forelimbs that wriggle furiously in his grasp. The shape of it’s more obvious when Barney’s struggling to hold it aloft, round and humpbacked and not unlike a plucked chicken. That’s when it hits him.

“Jesus Christ, is that a headcrab?!” yelps Gordon. His hands instinctively go for his crowbar before he remembers that he _doesn’t fucking have one_ right now.

Barney hurls the headcrab to the ground, where it screeches and awkwardly rights itself on its feet. Gordon’s eyes dart around the lab, hoping that somebody else might have a weapon to fight the thing off - and boy, is he getting tired of being this goddamn helpless - but Alyx and Dr. Kleiner barely seem fazed.

In fact, Kleiner brings a hand to his chest and gasps, “Lamarr! There you are!” like a fond (but worried) pet owner.

“I thought you got rid of that pest!” Barney snaps.

“Certainly not!” Is that indignation Gordon hears? He has maybe two seconds to process this before Kleiner turns back to him with a smile. “Never fear, Gordon, she is de-beaked and completely harmless. The worst she might try to do is couple with your head. Fruitlessly.”

The headcrab, apparently named Lamarr, makes a high keening noise in response.

“Couple? Like, you mean it— Oh my God, _what?!”_ Hysteria cranks Gordon’s pitch up to embarrassing levels.

He can’t help the burst of laughter that escapes him, desperate and incredibly confused. Something about this - not the ‘getting his ass beat’, not the ‘being flung into the far future’, not even the ‘getting his ass beat a second and third time for good measure’ - breaks him. The headcrab wants to fuck him. Okay! Sure! Gordon wheezes with laughter, his hands braced on his knees.

And then his head jerks up at the sound of a distant clattering. Something heavy falls, then another, and Gordon follows the noise to the source: a loft on the far side of the lab, piled high with crates and ancient-looking computers and other laboratory ephemera. Which Lamarr is currently scaling, tipping over cardboard boxes in a frantic attempt to escape.

“No, no! Careful, Lamarr, those are quite fragile!” Kleiner scolds, a plaintive quaver to his voice.

He gets a monitor knocked to the ground for his efforts. The four of them wince in unison at the sound of shattered glass. Lamarr scrambles and skitters upward, and Kleiner can’t make his way up there fast enough before she crawls into an open vent, disappearing down the length of a sheet metal duct.

Gordon blinks, then turns to face Kleiner, eyebrows raised. “Well, uh. Problem solved?”

“Hardly! It’ll be another week before I can coax her out of there!”

Barney makes a displeased huff in the back of his throat, muttering, “Yeah. Longer if we’re lucky.”

“Okay, okay, hang on. You guys used to have a cat, right? Like, a normal pet? Why would you get one of those gross little fuckers instead and - and debeak it?” Gordon runs a hand back through his hair. A strand falls loose from his ponytail and hangs in his face.

Isn’t that kind of fucked, anyway? Like how you’re not supposed to declaw cats because you’re, like, literally chopping off their toes? What are the ethics of lopping the beak off of some zombie-making, plucked-chicken-looking alien creature? To make it a pet, no less? There’s options, they gotta have options. There’s no way they couldn’t have just gotten a dog. It’s a fascist dystopia or whatever, there’s gotta be some poor, skinny, mangy dog running around the streets somewhere. For flavor. They always have one of those.

“Maybe you should ask Barney about that one,” says Alyx, grinning.

“Hey, now, don’t pin this on me! It was a joke, alright, I didn’t expect Dr. Kleiner to go on and actually _do_ it.” He crosses his arms. “Still can’t believe you made me catch one of those damn things.”

“Made you? I dunno, you seemed pretty enthusiastic about it—”

“Look, you get a couple beers in a guy and—”

Dr. Kleiner clears his throat, interrupting their argument before it gets the chance to properly start. “I’m afraid we’ll have to table this discussion for another time,” he says, in the tone of voice of somebody who has had to ask them to table this discussion several times before. “We’ve got to get Gordon into his suit, and time is ticking. Barney?”

“Barney?” Gordon repeats vacantly. Then the rest of that statement catches up to him. “Hey, wait, I’m not getting back into that thing! I just got out of it! And I’ve got chafing in places you _really_ don’t want chafing!”

“We’ve made a few adjustments since the last time you saw it. 80% less chafing, guaranteed,” Alyx tells him. He’s not sure if she’s being serious or not. It’s hard to tell with these guys.

Barney snorts. “Yeah, I can’t say that big ol’ metal diaper was doin’ you any favors.”

“That ‘metal diaper’ was the height of technological progress in 1997, if you must know,” says Dr. Kleiner, with a whiff of defensiveness. “But the general sentiment holds, I believe. There have been serious advancements made in the anti-chafing field… chiefly, the introduction of a carbon-fiber bodysuit under the chassis. There were a number of complaints about that sort of thing before, well,” he trails off, gesturing around them in a way that Gordon takes to mean ‘everything’.

“Carbon fiber sounds pretty chafe-y, my guy.”

“C’mon, Gordon, we don’t have time for this,” Barney says, impatient. “You two mind givin’ us some privacy?”

“Already on it,” says Alyx as she smartly turns tail and heads back to the central lab area.

Kleiner mutters his assent and does the same, leaving Barney and Gordon alone in the glorified garage. With the HEV suit. Gordon sighs. He’s not getting out of this one, is he? At least the thing looks more, uh, ergonomic this time around. Once he’s sure the others are out of viewing range, he clears his throat awkwardly and gives Barney a sidelong glance.

“Now’s not the time for bein’ delicate, Doc. ‘Sides, it’s nothin’ I haven’t seen before.”

Gordon’s not sure he likes the way Barney says that. And besides, even if it _was_ something Barney had seen before, Gordon sure doesn’t fucking remember it. Despite his words, Barney pointedly looks at the HEV suit instead, and he supposes it’ll have to do. He can’t help the way his ears burn as he starts to undo the buttons at his neck, working his way down the single-piece jumpsuit until he’s got it open down to the crotch. At which point he shucks it off his shoulders. The plain white tank top and gray briefs underneath it come as a surprise even to him, but a welcome one, all things considered. 

“You can keep your underthings on, though it might not help with all that chafing you were talkin’ about,” says Barney, still not looking directly at him.

“Cool! Cool. Yeah, I think I’ll, uh, do that. I mean. Keep them on.” He’s had enough of hopped-up security guards getting a peek at his steak and eggs lately, thank you.

And so Gordon toes off his cheap, utilitarian shoes (which he didn’t even notice he was wearing, for the record), and he steps out of that garish orange jumpsuit, and stripped of all those things, artifacts of some slice of humanity he didn’t know he was a part of, he reluctantly steps foot into that mess of carbon fiber and synthetic polymers and God knows what else. And he tries not to fidget too much as Barney tugs it tight up his legs. He expects the bodysuit to be stiff and unwieldy, like the bulletproof vests he’s used to seeing, but it fits him snugly and has a smooth texture on the inside not unlike a wetsuit. The rectangular panels on the front - good old-fashioned Kevlar, Barney informs him - are his only indicator that this isn’t your ordinary scuba gear.

Barney lets Gordon zip it at the front while he busies himself with the armor. All told, the experience is much less like stepping into a mech, like the first time around. Seamless and simple and, honestly, a process that Gordon barely remembers. It was like he just had but to step foot into it and the job was done. This is a more involved affair, he finds. Each individual piece of orange armor has to be fitted into place just so, like a clamshell, before being screwed tightly together. First come the boots, shitstompers in their own right, even if they’ve been given the same slick redesign as the rest. Then armor sealed around his outer thighs, a curious band of metal around his hips and waist, and arm fittings, replete with gloves.

Finally, Barney wrestles that characteristic chest piece into place with a grunt. He’s starting to break out in a sweat. It’s only then that it dawns on Gordon just how strong this guy’s gotta be. He supposes it makes sense. Black Mesa always encouraged a fit and healthy workforce, and Gordon’s no exception himself. Takes a lot of muscle to haul around this HEV suit, let alone all the bullshit jumping and climbing and running for his life he had to do in it.

Mostly, though, it’s how _skinny_ Barney is that makes this catch him unawares. It’s not something he noticed until Barney got all up close and personal, but the way he twists and turns to get around Gordon makes it clear that the bulk of him is just padding from that Combine uniform. Gordon shifts in place, suddenly uncomfortable. He’s a big guy, alright, and the unflattering comparisons creep into his head before he can stop them.

The abrupt peal of a klaxon forcefully yanks Gordon away from that train of thought. He doesn’t scream - it’s more of a yelp than anything - but it’s close enough to be embarrassing.

“Oh dear!” he hears from the other side of the lab.

“Look alive, Gordon,” Barney says, clapping him on the back hard enough to make something rattle. “Follow the doc, and get that suit juiced up!”

“Jesus Christ, can I go five minutes without something happening?!”

Gordon suspects that the answer to that is ‘no’ before the question fully leaves him. He does as he’s told nonetheless, nearly tripping over his own feet from the sudden ungainliness of a hundred pounds of steel. Dr. Kleiner’s at the far end of the building, fiddling with a picture on the wall. Really doesn’t seem like the time, Gordon thinks hotly.

“Ah, yes. Gordon, there’s a charger on the wall,” instructs Dr. Kleiner without looking at him. “I’ve modified your suit to draw power from Combine energy outlets, which are plentiful wherever they patrol.”

Gordon scans the aforementioned wall and finds the aforementioned charger, a sharp and hostile-looking amalgam of black metal and bright, glowing yellow lights. For all his advanced education, he can’t make heads or tails of it. It’s not like there’s instructions printed on the side.

He glances at Kleiner, hoping for an explanation, but Kleiner’s got his face buried in some sort of scanner. A faint blue light illuminates his face before blinking out of existence. Then something rumbles under Gordon’s feet, and the wall near him starts to split in two, a hidden door to some kind of secret room recessed into the wall. Behind it, another bank of computers and terminals and a platform of some kind, ringed by concentric bands of metal. It’s akin to an elevator, if Gordon had to take a guess. It doesn’t appear to go anywhere, though.

Kleiner files into the newly-revealed room, followed by Alyx and Barney, and Gordon’s heart rate spikes as he realizes that he’s gotta hurry the fuck up. He thrusts his hands haphazardly into the complicated inner workings of the charger, hoping that whatever he’s messing with won’t, like, electrocute him. To no one's surprise, he doesn't get far with this approach. He does, however, dislodge some kind of ribbed plastic hose inside, and it flops limply out of the front, spewing a small amount of glowing yellow liquid onto the floor. And onto Gordon's suit.

Juice? Is this fucking _juice?_

Well, this is no time for him to look a gift horse in the mouth, he supposes. Failing all else, Gordon grabs the end of the hose and jams it into his mouth. Whoa. Whatever this stuff is, it tastes like mango juice with a side of paint thinner and battery acid. He's had worse at parties before. So, that established, he steels himself to sucking down as much of it as he can, slurping wetly. Gets it all over his fucking goatee like some kind of animal. A curious electric feeling courses through his body, tingling and alien, and a small meter inlaid into a panel on his suit begins to tick up. Cool. But kind of gross, and he can't even begin to imagine how this works.

Gordon draws from it until he's pulling nothing but air, then powerwalks in after them, scrubbing at his face with his glove. Just in time to see Alyx step onto the platform, those concentric rings closing around her like an elaborate system of guard rails. Kind of excessive, if you ask him.

“Gordon, why don’t you position yourself near the panel over there and wait for my word?” Kleiner suggests.

“Uh, okay? Why?”

Again, no response. They’re all too busy getting this thing set up, whatever it is… Oh. Oh!

“Oh, shit! This is the teleporter!” Gordon gasps, as if this is a revelation to anybody but himself. “I was expecting something a little more… I dunno. Glow-y. Mysterious.”

He was also kind of expecting to have to go first. It’s reassuring that he’ll get to see how this thing works before they shunt him through it and give him another G-force headache, but a part of him can’t help feeling bad that they picked Alyx to be their lab rat instead. Gordon’s still not thrilled about the cat thing. Either way, it doesn’t seem to be his call, so he stands next to the electrical panel Kleiner suggested and acts like he’s doing something important.

“Isaac, are you there?”

An unfamiliar voice speaks from the other end of the room, and Gordon turns to spot a stranger’s face filling the whole of a large monitor mounted on the wall. The man angles himself this way and that, like he’s struggling to present himself in a Zoom call.

“Yes, yes, Eli, a bit of a hold up on this end. You will never guess who found his way into our lab this morning!” says Dr. Kleiner, by way of response.

The man’s face is dark and warm, lined with the wrinkles of a life well-lived, and his short, heavily-graying hair suggests that he’s roughly Kleiner’s age. Nobody Gordon recognizes, he knows that much, though he does bring to mind _somebody_ he knew in a past life. Not quite as strongly as Kleiner, but there’s something about this stranger that makes him think of Darnold. He’s older, yes, and sounds completely different, but he's got a kind and excitable gleam in his eyes that makes his thoughts drift back to the Lambda Lab, to the Potions Department. He feels a weight inside his chest as he dimly wonders whether or not Darnold got out of Black Mesa in one piece.

… He was probably fine. Lucky bastard was likely sipping soda in an _entertainment facility_ with the others. He hoped.

Gordon turns back to the man on the screen. His face lights up with recognition when he spots Gordon, prompting him to awkwardly rub the back of his neck.

“That’s not who I think it is, is it?” Eli, wasn’t it? Eli’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

Kleiner nods. “Indeed it is, and it’s our intention to send him packing straight away… in the company of your lovely daughter.”

“Are you ready for us, Dad?” Alyx calls from the teleporter.

Daughter? Dad? Gordon’s eyebrows draw together, trying to process this new information. He feels like he’s watching a little clique from the outside, full of laughter and inside jokes that he is distinctly not invited to partake in. Brings to mind bitter highschool memories that he’d rather leave buried. (He’s nearly 30 years old, for God’s sake, why is he still hung up on this?) That aside, Gordon supposes he can see it. He wouldn’t call Alyx the spitting image of her dad, but there’s something unmistakably _them_ that they share. Maybe it’s the eyes.

“We’re all set on this end,” Eli confirms, appearing to check some panels and push the occasional button on his side.

Alyx leans forward, hands braced on the guard rails. The weight of her makes them squeak ominously. “Then let’s do it!”

The platform begins to rise, stopping just underneath a light fixture mounted at the top of the shaft. Like Gordon said earlier, it doesn’t actually seem to _go_ anywhere, so he’s not sure what the point is. But then again, he’s not the theoretical physicist here— Wait. No. Yes he is! Doesn’t make the whole set-up any more scrutable to him, though.

Up at his station, Kleiner does some calculations of his own, muttering, “Let’s see, the massless field-flux should self-limit and I have clamped the manifold parameters to CY base and LG orbifold, Hilbert inclusive. Conditions could hardly be more ideal!”

“That’s what you said last time,” Barney frowns.

“Oh, yeah, the LG orbs are all in alignment,” Gordon says, blithe and needlessly confident. “Everything looks clamped on my end. Yep.” He slaps the side of the electrical panel next to him to prove this. Unfortunately, the impact causes one of the giant plugs to pop loose from its socket, clattering to the floor. Gordon winces and flinches back from the spray of sparks.

“Initializing in three… two… one… Oh fiddlesticks, what now?”

“Uh, Doctor, the plug.” Alyx gestures to Gordon and his little fuck-up.

“Oops. My bad,” he says meekly. Then he picks up the plug and wiggles it back into place, jamming the others more securely into their sockets for good measure.

Above him, Alyx smirks. Heat crawls up Gordon’s face. “You gonna let Gordon throw the switch?” she asks, a pointed eyebrow raised at him.

Kleiner gives him the go ahead, at which Gordon can’t help but huff. “Wow, thanks, G-man. You really sent me into the future just so I could do menial fucking labor,” he says under his breath.

He only partially means that, though. The switch in question is massive, a real mad scientist’s affair, and no matter how pissy he is at being demeaned like this, there’s something undeniably cool about the prospect. As if he’s about to flip on a set of Tesla coils and raise Frankenstein’s monster from the dead. It takes a bit of elbow grease to work it loose, but in short order, Gordon’s throwing down the switch with a satisfying clunk.

The metal rings surrounding Alyx begin to spin around her, slowly at first, then picking up speed with the accompaniment of a low droning sound, which increases in volume accordingly. Blue lamps flare to life on the interior of each ring from the bottom up. Alyx’s eyes dart around, and she steps backward, then forward again as she realizes there’s not much room to maneuver. Basic physics tells Gordon this must have something to do with magnets. There’s spinning, there’s electricity, there’s sparks and lights and a worrying teal plasma coalescing around her, so there’s gotta be a serious electromagnetic field going on around here.

“Very good,” calls out Kleiner. “Final sequence commencing… now.”

“I can’t look,” Barney groans, turning away.

“Me either.” Gordon’s groan comes out far more despondent than Barney’s. Barney’s not the one who’s gotta hop into that thing next, okay? It’s equal parts sympathy and self-preservation.

He covers his eyes with a freshly-gloved hand, but he can’t help but peek through his fingers. Just a little. Through that narrow slit, he sees that the plasma’s grown from a thin tendril worming around Alyx to an envelope, surrounding her on all sides. She laughs, slow and nervous, as she raises her hands in a defensive stance. Oh, God. Gordon slams his fingers shut again. All he can do is listen as Alyx’s sounds of surprise grow more worried, and the drone permeating the air picks up in pitch, and the last of her words trail off in a distorted shriek before a whip crack snaps through the air and rattles the metal enclosure.

Then there’s a low whine, as if the system’s powering down. Gordon sucks in a deep breath and braves another look. Well, she’s… she’s gone. He can see that much. 'Where to' is a different story.

“Please tell me it worked,” Gordon moans weakly, dropping his hands.

“See for yourself,” comes Eli’s voice again. Gordon looks back at the monitor, where Eli’s shifting out of the way. And to his left, Alyx leans into frame, giddy and windswept and miraculously in one piece.

“Hey, Doc!”

Kleiner sighs, running his hand back along his head as if he had hair to push back with it. “Thank goodness. My relief is almost palpable.”

“Fantastic work, Izzy,” says Eli, beaming.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit. Dr. Freeman proved an able assistant.”

“That’s me, only the able-est of assistants,” Gordon says. Then he blinks. “Wait, hold on, that’s not what I— I’m not _ableist,_ okay, that would be fucked up! I’m the _most able_ of assistants. Incredibly capable guy. That’s me, Gordon Freeman. Not ableist. I open doors for people with wheelchairs all the time!”

Dr. Kleiner and Eli glance at each other through the viewscreen for an uncomfortably long beat, then Eli clears his throat. “Let’s go ahead and bring Gordon through now,” he suggests, brushing past it.

“Right you are,” Kleiner says with a quick clap of his hands. “Speak to you again in a few moments.”

He returns to typing at his console, presumably preparing the apparatus for a second transport. Barney takes the chance to elbow him in the arm, mirroring Alyx earlier, and snorts, “Good job, Gordon. Throwing that switch and all? I can see your MIT education really pays for itself.”

A hot spike of irritation lances through Gordon. “What? Shut up, man, they asked me to! Can’t you ever say anything nice to me for once, Benrey?”

“Whoa, easy, boy,” Barney says. His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and his hands rise up in front of him, palms facing Gordon. A placating gesture. “Hey, Doc, you sure he ain’t got some kinda concussion? I don’t know how well that’s gonna play with all those manifolds, or what have you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of experimental data for that,” Kleiner responds with a strained laugh. “Gordon, as soon as you’re in position, we’ll send you to Eli. And, ah, make sure to report any side effects, will you? You might have a slight headache afterward, that’s normal.”

That klaxon sounds again, and the three of them flinch as one. “And not a moment too soon,” says Barney.

“Great! I’m glad that’s normal! I would’ve liked to know that, like, half an hour ago!” bitches Gordon to deaf ears. Well, at least now he knows that the migraine wasn’t indicative of some kind of brain bleed. Probably.

He really, really doesn’t want to do this. But Barney and Kleiner look at him expectantly, and his stomach sinks as he realizes that he doesn’t have an easy way out of this one. Where else is he gonna go, anyway? Out the way he came? At least if he deals with being teleported yet a-fucking-gain, he’ll be among people who might have the time to give him some answers. The number of questions he’s racking up in the back of his mind is becoming untenable. His mental bookshelves all bowing under the weight of them. And maybe, just maybe, there’ll be a good nap waiting in the wings.

So Gordon takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and then steps forward onto the platform himself.

The guard rails close around him just the same as they did Alyx, and it rises into the air again, with the slow churn of machinery grinding into place as a pleasant backdrop. “This doesn’t feel very OSHA-compliant,” Gordon whines, his hands instinctively gripping the rails at his sides.

“Oh, he thinks there’s still an OSHA to worry about,” Eli bursts out laughing. “That’s optimistic, Gordon, I’ll give you that.”

Dr. Kleiner chuckles at that, too. It kind of rankles. “Alright, Gordon. Initializing in three… two… one… eh, Barney, if you would be so kind?” As he speaks, the rails churn to life, spinning around Gordon and dazzling him with the blue lights on their interior.

Below him, Barney nods and places a hand on the switch. “Good luck out there, Gordon,” he says.

“Yes, indeed. We’re ready to project you, Gordon. Bon voyage, and best of luck in your future endeavors.” That drone reaches a fever pitch as he types the last of his commands into the terminal. “Final sequence,” Kleiner announces, and Barney flips the switch—

“What the hell?!”

There’s a crash. A sputtering of sparks. Another goddamn alarm. Cables tear from their housing on the ceiling, and with them falls something heavy, dropping to the ground with a thud. Something round and chicken-shaped.

“What is it?” calls out Kleiner.

“It’s your pet, the freakin’ head-humper!” Barney snaps back, covering his head defensively.

“Guys? Guys! Those cables seemed important!” And that they did, but the rails are still spinning around him, and the background whine is escalating to a fever pitch, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Like an off-note. Gordon clamps his hands over his ears to try to drown it out, but the whine builds into a shriek and bleeds in through his palms.

“Lamarr? Hedy! No!”

That’s the last thing Gordon hears before the headcrab startles, leaping away from the sparks and directly towards Gordon.

Just as a whip crack rattles the platform.

His vision blurs and thrums suddenly, a kaleidoscope of colors streaking past his eyes. And his head, his fucking _head,_ it throbs as if every heartbeat is building up pressure in his brain, it’s going to explode! Gordon clamps his hands down even harder, as if squeezing all the blood back to where it needs to be. His fingernails dig into his scalp. His eyes narrow, almost shut tight. But just beyond them, he can make out a distant vista, something that isn’t the aged brick and cold, bare steel of the laboratory.

Sand. Sun-baked sand stretching out to the horizon. A single telephone pole, crooked and unmoored. And a flock of black birds, startled into flight, their caws almost offended-sounding as they dust up from the ground and the headcrab - Hedy? - hops up to snag one in its claws.

Another flash behind Gordon’s eyes, a surge of white and a crackle of electricity. Throb. He’s back in the lab again, or at least, he thinks he is. Something wet blurs his vision. There’s yelling in the background, voices now familiar to him but so garbled as to be incomprehensible. But when he tries to step forward, out of the plasma field, his feet drag like he’s trying to move through molasses, every motion agonizingly slow to the point of impossibility. Then a hook yanks him just behind his navel and jerks him away.

Those iridescent flashes in his vision jitter and shimmer, looking for all the world as if he can _see_ himself being jerked through spacetime, and they’re nothing so much as the streaks of headlights outside a car window. Gordon blinks, and has to wrench his eyes back open. He’s in front of Alyx, now. Others, too, but he can’t make them out. Somewhere gray, industrial. Dotted with server banks and printer feeds. He thinks he hears Eli, but he’s never been too good at picking out people by voice, and there’s too much blood pulsing behind his eardrums to tell, anyway.

“It seems to be some kind of interference,” he hears from an unfamiliar face.

 _No shit,_ he wants to yell, but he can’t. He can only stand there, helpless, as he surges through Minkowski space again.

Colors warp and shift away from that pearly green iridescence and into an angry orange-red. They flare with each sluggish heartbeat. Gordon squints at this new room before him, Big Brother’s wet dream, an entire wall lined from end to end with surveillance feeds and computer terminals. An embroidered red carpet, spread in the middle. And at the center, the locus of it all, an aging man at an ornate wooden desk who looks suspiciously like the Gorton’s fisherman.

He tries to laugh, but nothing comes out fast enough.

“What’s the meaning of this?” The man gets to his feet. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

Not like he could answer that, even if he wanted to - again, again with the fucking teleportation shit, he’s so sick of it he might actually _be_ sick! Something jerks him back to the lab, back to Barney and Kleiner, and he hears Kleiner yell at Barney, “You can’t just wade into the field! It will peel you apart!”

Somehow, even through the slow-motion time distortion, Gordon feels his heartbeat kick into anxious overdrive. Jesus Christ, is that what it’s doing to him? Peeling him apart? That nausea surges. Suddenly, Gordon’s keenly aware of what might have happened to that fucking cat. It’s… Schrödinger, right? Like in undergrad. Alive and dead, and he’ll only get to figure out which state he’s truly in if he can get out of this godforsaken field.

“We just lost Gordon! What’s going on?” Alyx’s voice, tinny and frantic, comes from the monitor on the wall.

“I wish I knew, I’m encountering unexpected interference!” Kleiner tells her.

Barney gazes up at him from the floor, where he stands dangerously close to the warp field, arms outstretched as if he means to scale the damn thing and tear Gordon out himself. “Don’t worry, Gordon, we’ll—”

Flash. Yank. Throb. Wetness trickles down Gordon’s face.

“There he is!” Alyx.

“We’re losing him again!” A woman, just behind her.

Again.

Back to the dizzying array of monitors and the violent orange-red surging past his vision. That man - Dr. Breen, he remembers with a great struggle - stands facing the wall, head angled to look up at a video feed that Gordon can’t quite make out.

He speaks, unaware of Gordon’s presence. “The man I saw, I’m all but certain it was…”

One of the monitors starts to move of its own accord, a robotic arm swiveling it to face Gordon directly. Like a massive eye rotating in its socket. Breen follows its gaze, his face wrinkling in a cold sneer as the two of them lock eyes. A chill runs down Gordon’s spine.

“…Gordon Freeman,” he breathes.

Again.

Gordon pops into existence high in the air, unsupported, and immediately drops down into a body of water. There’s no time for him to suck in a breath, no time for him to even stretch his arms out in an attempt to tread water. He just sinks like a rock. Inky blackness subsumes him, with nothing to orient himself in space save for the sunlight rapidly receding above him, and panic grips him by the chest.

Then a great, scaly beast emerges from the darkness.

Its maw opens wide as it approaches, fast, faster than any sea creature Gordon’s seen before, and the interior is fleshy and studded with small, sharp teeth and it quickly becomes clear that it’s big enough to swallow him whole and _oh Christ it’s going to swallow him whole!_ And he forces his eyes shut and waits for the end—

And—

And he whites out again, just for a moment. Long enough for whatever mysterious transdimensional force is in play to yank him back to the present. The lab. But not quite the lab - a view from the outside looking in, separated by a floor-length window, through which Gordon can see Kleiner furiously typing commands as he occasionally glances at Eli’s face on the monitor nearest.

Kleiner’s voice manages to pass through the glass, muffled as it is. “What do you mean, he’s not there?”

“He didn’t come through!”

“Then where is he?” Kleiner insists, worried.

“Behind you,” says Eli, as he shifts his gaze to look at Gordon directly.

Kleiner turns to face him, too, and throws his hands up in the air as he yelps in surprise. But he recovers quickly, and orders Gordon, “You must get out of here! Run!” as Eli orders him in turn to shut the thing down.

“Get down outta sight! I’ll come find you!” yells Barney, from somewhere that Gordon can hear but not see.

Okay, sure! He would do that if he could fucking _move!_ And he’d say it to Barney’s face, too, if he could, but he’s still stuck in this stupid field and he can feel that hook cinching around his waist again and—

And then there’s that familiar whine of the teleporter powering down, and that hook releases its grip, and Gordon Freeman finally drops back into reality as he knows it. His knees give out the moment he touches solid ground. And he hurls, or at least, his body tries to, anyway. There’s no pizza or warm soda for him to even hurl up.

“Never again,” he mutters hoarsely, once his body behaves enough for him to get words out. “Never again! That wasn’t science, that was magic bullshit for fucking wizards! Not this time, Greybeard! Gordon’s walkin’!”

Gordon raises his head and stumbles to his feet, clutching at the guard rail beside him. The world spins. As it slowly settles, he starts to get a good eyeful of his surroundings, now that he’s pretty sure he’s not going to be forcefully whisked off to God knows where. He’s standing on a metal walkway just outside the lab, with an electrical substation at his left. A large transformer hums. The setting sun casts a warm yellow light upon a rusting factory in the distance, and high-rise tenements pepper the sky around him. And finally, he turns around to spot one of those obnoxious, rotund surveillance robots bobbing behind his head. It lets off a camera flash right in his face.

“Oh, for God’s sake! No fucking paparazzi, please!”

He shoves it, and it only bobs in response. It’s soon followed by another of its kind, clicking and whirring and snapping his picture. Maybe he _should_ go, actually. If his legs will listen to him, anyway.

The only way for him to go is down, dropping off the end of the walkway, and Gordon lands with a solid, metallic thud as his new boots absorb the impact. From there, he’s cornered, surrounded on all sides by looming buildings, with the exception of a narrow path winding through the chainlink fence of the substation. Gordon eyes the electrocution danger signs that are plastered around him with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Sure, he has no idea what language they’re actually written in, but a stick figure struck by electricity is a pictograph that transcends all language barriers.

“I don’t know if they upgraded this suit to have, like, electricity resistance or something, but something tells me this is _not_ how I wanna find out,” Gordon tells himself as he attempts to give the transformers and wires a wide berth. Easier said than done.

But he makes it out alive, and that’s what matters. The fence gate on the other side leads to a recessed stairwell, poorly-lit and cluttered with garbage. Does anything get cleaned around here? That lab was the nicest-looking place he’s seen in a dog’s age. Each step he takes up those stairs echoes around him, and he winces, hoping that no one’s around to hear it. Then he rounds the corner, passes through a hall studded with sodium lamps, and finds… another chainlink fence. This time, the gate through it is cordoned off by boards nailed across the doorway.

Gordon grabs one of the planks by the edges and tries his hardest to wrench it free. These screws in 'em can’t be that sturdy, right? But sturdy it is, and it doesn’t budge. So Gordon resigns himself to rattling the fence in frustration.

“Come _on,”_ he groans. “Where am I supposed to go now?! Everybody keeps telling me, ‘Gordon go here’, ‘Gordon do this’, ‘Gordon step into the teleporter and get your atoms all scrambled’, and for what? A goddamn pizza?!” Gordon lets out a wordless yell and shakes the boards all the harder, then leans his head against them in defeat.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, sweat cooling on his forehead, before he hears a voice above him.

“Hey, Gordon!”

It’s Barney, standing on a walkway above him and waving down. Relief crashes upon Gordon’s shoulders like a wave. “Barney! My friend Barney! Oh my God, you have no idea how glad I am to see you, buddy!”

“Hey, the feeling’s mutual,” he says with a crooked grin. “The citadel’s on full alert! I’ve never seen it lit up like that.”

“The citadel?” He follows Barney’s gaze behind him to a massive blue spire, the same one he’d seen out in the plaza. Oh. The Citadel, capital-C. Birds scatter from its parapets, but their movements don’t seem right, all jerky and ungainly and like they’re about to plummet in freefall before they finally take flight. Gordon squints.

 _Oh_. Those aren’t birds, are they.

“Get out of City 17 as fast as you can, Gordon,” Barney tells him. “Take the old canals, right? They’ll get you to Eli’s lab. It’s a dangerous route, but there’s a whole network of refugees, and they’ll help you if they can.”

Gordon’s voice pitches up in a whine. “What, by myself? Seriously? Can’t you come with me, man? I don’t know where I’m going!”

“I’d come with you, but I’ve got to look after Dr. Kleiner.” The look Barney gives him is the closest he’s come to ‘sympathetic’ all day. “Oh, and before I forget… I think you dropped this back in Black Mesa,” he adds, as he holds something aloft.

His crowbar!

“Holy shit, I never thought I’d be so happy to see that again,” breathes Gordon. “Gimme!”

Barney tosses it down at his feet, stifling a laugh. “Good luck out there, buddy. You’re gonna need it,” he says at last. He gives Gordon a quick, cheeky salute, then turns and heads back the way he came.

“Thanks! Uh, bye! Talk to you later!” Gordon calls after him. So what if he’s coming off a little strong? He doesn’t know when the hell he’s gonna encounter a friendly human again, and he’s just trying to take advantage of the moment.

Well, at least he’s got his trusty crowbar to protect him, he thinks as he picks it up. The steel is pleasantly heavy in his hands. Oh, yeah. He can put two and two together.

The crowbar makes short work of those boards, and God, does it feel good to beat the hell out of something. Gordon whoops and hollers as he busts them down with more force than is strictly necessary. Sweet freedom, baby! The freedom for him to make his way through the fenced-in passageway before him, to see a wooden crate lying ahead in a dark corridor, and to sit his ass down and take a breather. Just for a second. It creaks under his weight, but holds steady.

Deep breaths, buddy. It’s gonna be fine. Gordon buries his face in his hands and sighs.

Something chirrups in the distance, and Gordon hears the beating of wings as a nearby flock of birds kicks off. Like they’ve been disturbed. Please just be a cat, he thinks furiously, as if he can will it to be true just by thinking it hard enough. He can handle cats. He lifts his head to look for the source, hoping against hope that it’s nothing he has to worry about right now.

And spots somebody’s face clipping through the side of the corridor, eyes lidded and dark.

“yo.”

Gordon screams.


End file.
